ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Reschensee Dam (Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy) from displacement and national contrast to touristic attraction

• In Event: Engineering Frontiers: Water, Expertise, and the Social Costs of Hydraulic Modernization

English Abstract

The Reschensee (in Italian Lago di Resia) is the largest lake in South Tyrol, with a capacity of 110 million cubic meters, and with the very iconic 14th century steeple which emerges from the lake. In 1920 the first project for a hydroelectric plant was presented, then in 1939 Montecatini company introduced a plan for an artificial lake, which would submerge several buildings, including the village of Graun and part of Reschen. The creation of the dam started in April 1940, but works were stopped due to the second world war. By 1946 works restarted and were finished in 1950. The expropriation practices were very complicated, and local population was hardly against the project. This case study is interesting on how an Italian company managed the project in this German-speaking area, with different national identities were the construction of the dam and the consequent displacement of the inhabitants had also a national dimension. The paper will present how it is possible to match and compare archival sources written in Italian conserved in public archives with different materials (flyers, newspaper articles, letters, diaries) related to the local German-speaking community and its effort against the dam construction and the consequent displacement pratiques. The final part of the paper will be focused on how in the last decades the steeple which emerges from the lake has become a touristic attraction and has assumed a different symbolic meaning.

Author

• Stefano Morosini, Università degli studi di Bergamo